Security researchers have exposed a piece of Android malware that steals text messages.
FireEye uncovered the ‘MisoSMS’ botnet, which is claimed to be one of the largest, advanced of its kind so far.
According to the security firm, the botnet steals texts by disguising itself as an Android settings application used for administrative tasks.
It then sends the texts to a command-and-control (CnC) infrastructure hosted in China.
FireEye also discovered 64 mobile botnet campaigns corresponding to the MisoSMS malware family, with each of them leveraging web mail as its CnC infrastructure.
"Once MisoService is initiated, it checks whether the phone is connected to the internet and the cellular network," the security firm said.
"If so, it sends a byte array formed by the request data structure shown above.
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"It then makes a copy of data from the request structure into the replay structure and sends the byte array of the request structure via SMS.
